Page 26 of The Princess and the Pizza Man

Sound finally made its way back to his ears—the sound of a laugh he was all-too-familiar with. He snapped a hand around Winter’s wrist and pulled her deep into one of the hedges, losing his footing and falling rear-end first to the ground, taking Winter with him.

A high-pitched squeak escaped her, and this time, Will put a hand over her mouth just as Bells’ voice got much closer.

“… he must’ve been a giant if he was taller than you,” she said, and a deep, throaty voice chuckled right after. Something was digging into Will’s right butt cheek, but he wasn’t gonna move. Winter’s normally perfect hair was caught up in the canopy of branches surrounding them, but she held stone still as well, the cover from the hedge only enough for the both of them if they held perfectly still.

“I am tall,” Garreth said, and Will tried with all his might to concentrate on their conversation and not the way Winter’s body pressed into his and how he wasn’t cold anymore. Heck, he didn’t even remember what cold felt like. Her eyes locked on his, but he wasn’t sure if she was thinking about him or listening in to Bells and Garreth. He wondered what her parents’ eye colors were; he’d never seen such a diamond-looking set of eyes in his life.

He swallowed hard, and those eyes widened at the sound he’d made. She dropped a finger to his lips, and it was only then he realized his hand was no longer on her mouth, but stuck between their chests.

His heart beat kicked up, and he shot his gaze somewhere just above Winter’s head into the green leaves and thin branches of the hedge. He was not going to think about where his hand was and what it might or might not be touching. He wasn’t going to think about how warm she felt or the cinnamon perfume that still hung in the air or how he hadn’t given a second thought about that branch digging into his butt.

Concentrate on Bells, Will.

But he couldn’t. His thoughts were still swimming in mud, and he had no idea how to make sense of things until there was a lot more distance between Winter’s body and his.

A second or a year later, Bells and Garreth’s voices faded into the distance, and Winter’s tense body relaxed atop him as her stomach shook with silent laughter.

“Oh my… I’m so glad we came out here.”

Will jerked beneath her, half-wanting her to explain exactly what she meant by that and half-wishing she’d laugh against him again.

“Huh?”

She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. “Garreth… he’s not the brightest crayon in the box, wouldn’t you say?”

Will must’ve given her the most dumb-founded look because she let out another laugh and said, “Oh come on, don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”

“Uh…”

She rolled her eyes and settled her hands on his chest. His heart tripled in speed as she pushed off him and squirmed her way out into the open. As soon as her body left his, Will’s mind finally decided to show up.

“Well,” she said when he’d climbed from the hedge as well, “you talk to him tomorrow and tell me I’m wrong. We’re running short on time here.”

He muttered some kind of unintelligible word that made her laugh and turned back to the mansion.

“I think you need some sleep,” she said.

Will nodded, even though she wasn’t lookin’ at him anymore. Sleep and food were definitely what he needed, because for a second there, he really had believed the place was haunted.

---